So, too, was Dave. When the half-buried feral figure leaped from the pile of bodies, Dave’s reflexes overrode his weariness. He spun, his hands going up to defend himself. Had the figure been thrusting for his heart or throat, Dave would have turned him back.
But his assailant was not looking to take his life, not yet. A hand flashed out, precise, unerring, at this last supreme moment, a hand that reached for Dave’s side, not for his heart or throat. That reached for and found the key to what it had so long sought.
There was a tearing sound as a cord ripped. Dave heard Paul Schafer cry out up on the ridge. He clawed for his axe, but it was too late. It was much too late.
Rising gracefully from a rolling fall ten feet away, Galadan stood under the westering sun on the bloodied ground of Andarien, and he held Owein’s Horn in his hand.
And then the Wolflord of the andain, who had dreamt a dream for so many years, who had followed a never-ending quest—not for power, not for lordship over anyone or anything, but for pure annihilation, for the ending of all things—blew that mighty horn with all the power of his bitter soul and summoned Owein and the Wild Hunt to the ending of the world.
Kim heard Paul shout his warning, and then, in that same moment, all other sounds seemed to cease, and she heard the horn for the second time.
Its sound was Light, she remembered that. It could not be heard by the agents of the Dark. It had been moonlight on snow and frosty, distant stars the night Dave had sounded it before the cave to free the Hunt.
It was different now. Galadan was sounding it: Galadan, who had lived a thousand years in lonely, arrogant bitterness, after Lisen had rejected him and died. Tool of Maugrim, but seeking ever to further his own design, his one unvarying design.
The sound of the horn as he sent his soul into it was the light of grieving candles in a shadowed, hollow place; it was a half-moon riding through cold, windblown clouds; it was torches seen passing far off in a dark wood, passing but never coming near to warm with their glow; it was a bleak sunrise on a wintry beach; the pale, haunted light of glowworms in the mists of Llychlyn Marsh; it was all lights that did not warm or comfort, that only told a tale of shelter somewhere else, for someone else.
Then the sound ended, and the images faded.
Galadan lowered the horn. There was a dazed expression on his face. He said, incredulously, “I heard it. How did I hear Owein’s Horn?”
No one answered him. No one spoke. They looked to the sky overhead. And in the moment Owein was there, and the shadowy kings of the Wild Hunt, and before them all, unsheathing a deadly sword with the rest of them, rode the child on pale Iselen. The child that had been Finn dan Shahar.
And who now was death.
They heard Owein cry in wild, chaotic ecstasy. They heard the moaning of the seven kings. They saw them weave like smoke across the light of the sun.
“Owein, hold!” cried Arthur Pendragon, with all the ringing command his voice could carry.
But Owein circled over his head and laughed. “You cannot bind me, Warrior! We are free, we have the child, it is time for the Hunt to ride!”
And already the kings were swooping down, wildly destructive, invulnerable, the random thread of chaos in the Tapestry. Already it seemed their swords were shining with blood. They would ride forever and kill until there was nothing left to kill.
But even in that moment, Kim saw them falter, rein in their plunging, smoky steeds. She heard them lift their ghostly voices in wailing confusion.
And she saw that the child was not with them in their descent. Finn seemed to be in pain, in distress, his pale horse plunging and rearing in the reddening light of the sunset. He was shouting something. Kim couldn’t make it out. She didn’t understand.
In the Temple, Leila screamed. She heard the sound of the horn. It exploded in her brain. She could hardly form a thought. But then she understood. And she screamed again in anguish, as the connection was made once more.
Suddenly she could see the battle plain. She was in the sky over Andarien. Jaelle was on the ridge of land below, with the High King, Guinevere, all of them. But it was to the sky she looked, and she saw the Hunt appear: Owein, and the deadly kings, and the child, who was Finn, whom she loved.
She screamed a third time, aloud in the Temple, and at the summit of her mind voice in the sky far to the north:
Finn no! Come away! It is Leila. Do not kill them! Come away!
She saw him hesitate and turn to her. There was white pain, a splintering all through her mind. She felt shredded into fragments. He looked at her, and she could read the distance in his eyes, how far away he was—how far beyond her reach.
Too far. He did not even reply. He turned away. She heard Owein mock the Warrior, saw the sky kings draw their burning swords. There was fire all around her; there was blood in the sky, on the Temple walls. Finn’s shadowy white horse bared teeth at her and carried Finn away. Leila tore desperately free of whoever was holding her. Shalhassan of Cathal staggered back. He saw her stride, stumble, almost fall. She righted herself, reached the altar, claimed the axe.
“In the name of the Goddess, no!” one of the priestesses cried in horror, a hand before her mouth.
Leila did not hear her. She was screaming, and far away. She lifted Dana’s axe, which only the High Priestess could lift. She raised that thing of power high over her head and brought it crashing, thundering, echoing down upon the altar stone. And as she did she cried out again, building with the power of the axe, the power of Dana, climbing on top of them as upon a mighty wall to hurl the mind command:
Finn, I command you. In the name of Dana, in the name of Light! Come away! Come to me now in Paras Derval!
She dropped to her knees in the Temple, letting the axe fall. In the sky over Andarien she watched. She had nothing left; she was empty, a shell. If this was not enough it had all been waste, all bitterest waste.
Finn turned. He pulled his plunging horse, fought her around to face Leila’s disembodied spirit again. The horse reared in enraged resistance. She was all smoke and fire. She wanted blood. Finn clutched the reins with both hands, battling her to a standstill in the air. He looked at Leila, and she saw that he knew her now, that he had come back far enough to know.
So she said, softly, over the mind link they had shared, with no power left in her, only sorrow, only love, Oh, Finn, please come away. Please come back to me. She saw his smoky, shadowy eyes widen then, in a way that she remembered from before, from what he once had been. And then, just before she fainted, she thought she heard his voice in her mind saying one thing only, but the only thing that mattered: her name.
There wasn’t even the tracest flicker in her ring, and Kim knew that there wouldn’t be. She was powerless, empty of all save pity and grief, which didn’t count for anything. A part of her mind was savagely, despairingly aware that it was she who had released the Hunt to ride, on that night at the edge of Pendaran. How had she not seen what would come?
And yet, she also knew, without Owein’s intercession by the Adein River, the lios and the Dalrei would all have died. She would never have had time to reach the Dwarves. Aileron and the men of Brennin, fighting alone, would have been torn apart. Prydwen would have returned from Cader Sedat to find the war lost and Rakoth Maugrim triumphant.
Owein had saved them then. To destroy them now, it seemed.
So went her thoughts in the moment Finn pulled his white horse away from the others in the sky and began to guide her south. Kim put her hands to her mouth; she heard Jaelle whisper something on a taken breath. She couldn’t hear what it was.